The Complete
of Book Spiritual
Astrology
About the Author Per Henrik Gullfoss (Norway) is an internationally known astrologer who has run the first astrological school in Norway for the last 15 years. He has been a professional astrologer for 25 years and is also a lecturer and published author. His critically acclaimed book, Your Starsign, was a bestseller in Norway. In addition, he has published several other books on astrology, tarot and other spiritual development topics in Scandinavia. With his extensive knowledge of astrology, mythology, spirituality and religion, Gullfoss has inspired listeners and readers throughout the world. The Complete Book of Spiritual Astrology is his first book to be widely available in the U.S. and English-speaking countries.
The Complete
of Book Spiritual
Astrology per henrik gullfoss
Llewellyn Publications Woodbury, Minnesota
The Complete Book of Spiritual Astrology © 2008 by Per Henrik Gullfoss. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Edition First Printing, 2008 Book design by Donna Burch Cover art: leaf background © Brand X Pictures, celestial image © Visual Language Cover design by Kevin R. Brown Llewellyn is a registered trademark of Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data for The Complete Book of Spiritual Astrology is on file at the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-0-7387-1258-1 Llewellyn Worldwide does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business transactions between our authors and the public. All mail addressed to the author is forwarded but the publisher cannot, unless specifically instructed by the author, give out an address or phone number. Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific location will continue to be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to authors’ websites and other sources. Llewellyn Publications A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive, Dept. 978-0-7387-1258-1 Woodbury, MN 55125-2989, U.S.A. www.llewellyn.com Printed in the United States of America
Contents A Personal Note from the Author . . . vii Introduction . . . 1 Astrology and Enlightenment . . . 7 The Times They Are A-Changing . . . 11 In the Beginning . . . 17 1: The Signs . . . 21 Enlightenment through the Elements . . . 21 The Movement of Light . . . 25 Enlightenment Through the Qualities . . . 27 Signs . . . 31 Elementary Combinations . . . 41 Houses . . . 44 As Above, So Below: MC and IC . . . 56 As Within, So Without: Ascendant and Descendant . . . 71 Signs in Houses . . . 85 2: The Planets . . . 93 The Sun . . . 95 The Moon . . . 97 Integration of Sun and Moon Principles���������� . . . 106 Mercury and the Union of Sun and Moon���������� . . . 107 Venus and Attraction and Repulsion���������� . . . 120 Mars and the Path to Enlightenment���������� . . . 130 Venus and Mars and How to Get Some Satisfaction���������� . . . 139 The Play of the Inner Orchestra���������� . . . 142 Jupiter, Saturn, and Our Spiritual Playpen���������� . . . 145 The Outer Planets and the Endless Sea of Inner and Outer Space���������� . . . 157 Uranus and the Free Spirit���������� . . . 158 Neptune and the World of the Soul���������� . . . 169 Pluto and the Law of Eternal Change���������� . . . 178
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Involution and Evolution���������� . . . 187 The Planets in Houses���������� . . . 189 Rulerships���������� . . . 190 3: Aspects ����������������� . . . 201 Individual Aspects . . . 206 Planetary Groups . . . 212 Aspect Combinations . . . 213 Retrograde Planets . . . 229 4: Astrology and Time . . . 245
a personal� ����� note from� ���������� the author Dear Reader, I hope you will have as much joy and insight while reading this book as I had while writing it. I hope you will discover that we are living in a marvelous world and at an amazing and fantastic time. When we get caught up in the outer world and our ego’s little games, this planet can seem like a very harsh and difficult place to be, and these times can seem to be strange, threatening, and full of stupidity and ignorance. But as we go to the inner world and begin to listen to the voice behind the scenes and to see all the new revelations and perceptions that are becoming available, we truly discover that to be here—on this planet at this moment—is a great gift, one that gives us the ability to take part in a unique and exciting adventure. There are three beings to which I will especially give my thanks and love for making this book possible. The first one is the great spirit of All That Is. I feel so blessed by this spirit to have been allowed to write this book and to have received the insights and understanding you will find here. I am so grateful for having done this work, and I cannot say anything but hooray and thank you. The second and third are people living on Earth at this moment. I am very happy that they have chosen to be here at the same time as I, vii
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a personal note from the author
and I feel blessed by their presence. The first is my wife and eternal friend and companion, Tone Isis Briana Holberg. We have been working and teaching astrology together for two decades. Besides being a personal joy and inspiration to me, she has also helped me to become clearer and more precise in everything I do. She is five-times Virgo, so this comes naturally to her, and I am so happy to share so much of my life and work with her. And third, but not least, I want to thank Diana Brownstone, a beautiful artist and astrologer from New York. Without her outstanding work with this book, it would never have reached your hands. As my agent, she presented it to Llewellyn Worldwide in a way that was so professionally and delicately done that I am thoroughly impressed. She has also taken my somewhat crude, rudimentary, and grammatically inconsistent English and changed it into the product you hold in your hands at this moment. Again, I can just say thank you and bless the fate that through strange ways led to our meeting and friendship. And I will also say thank you to Lisa Finander from Llewellyn, whom I have never seen or talked with, but who has taken this project of mine and helped us in such a caring and enthusiastic way to create the product that it has become. Joy, love, beauty, and wisdom from me to you, Per Henrik Gullfoss
introduction You are about to embark on an adventurous journey into the world of spiritual astrology. This book will show you how to understand astrology as the language of the universe. It will give experienced astrologers a completely new and amazingly simple yet precise way of using astrology. And it will give new astrologers a wonderful and fantastic introduction to the real essence of astrology as humanity’s tool on its voyage toward awareness and awakening. If you are an advanced astrologer, you might want to skip the next few pages, which will give a short outline of the basics of astrology from a spiritual perspective. If you are quite new to the “game,” you should read this thoroughly and internalize as much of it as possible. The twelve most basic letters in the language of astrology are the signs. The astrological signs we use in Western astrology differ from the constellations we see in the heavens. If somebody tells you that your Sun isn’t really in the sign you believed it to be, he or she might be right. The reason for this is that Western astrologers do not use the stars as measurement for the sign. What a modern European astrologer does is divide Earth’s orbit around the Sun into twelve equal parts. The Sun will always enter the first degree of Aries at the equinox and the first degree of Capricorn at the midwinter solstice.
introduction
In this way, the signs are like twelve stages, each carrying a special energy and quality within itself. As the year develops and changes with the changes in the relationship between night and day and heat and cold, so too do the signs develop. Aries, the first sign of spring, is of course about beginnings and fire rising through budding life. Pisces, as the last sign, is about melting and thawing—the fingers of winter letting go their grip on the land. Most people have heard about their Sun sign. But a personal horoscope is so much more than just your Sun sign. All the planets we have in our solar system also exert their influence on us. But first let us talk about houses. If we say that the signs are like a wheel with twelve segments, we can put this wheel down on a piece of paper. And we then put another wheel over this. The basic setup of a horoscope consists of these two wheels. The wheel of houses comes from a division of Earth’s rotation around its axis (day/night) in twenty-four hours. In this time, it makes a complete 360-degree journey, just as it does around the Sun in one year. This circle created by the twenty-four-hour rotation of Earth is also divided into twelve equal segments, which we in astrology call “houses.” As the signs have their rhythm, the houses also have theirs. The first house is around sunrise, the tenth begins as the Sun reaches its zenith, the seventh as it sets, and the fourth at midnight. We could say that as each period of the day has its qualities and specific energy, so do the astrological houses have their qualities and specific energies. Signs and houses are like two alphabets that go from one to twelve: twelve signs and twelve houses. There are similarities between signs and houses that have the same number. The first house and Aries have a lot in common, but there are also several differences. We could say that while the signs show energies and qualities that come through in a person’s horoscope, the houses show the inner and outer areas of life where these energies come through and manifest. Libra, the seventh sign, is about harmony, beauty, balance, justice, and longing for union. The seventh house is about the person, the object, the area, or the inner quest, where we meet and try to unite and create that harmony and balance the Libran energy seeks.
introduction
If we look at the horoscope as a kind of stage, we can see the combined wheels of houses and signs as the setting for playing out our life. How the two wheels are put together tells a lot about our basic psychology and energetic possibilities. But, as we know, a theatre without actors is dull to look at. The actors on our astrological stage are the planets. At the moment we were born, every planet in our solar system had an exact location in a sign and a house. Every planet represents a special part of our psychological and mythological being. A planet’s placement in house and sign tells us about any special qualities and needs we have. To tap into our life force and keep our energy fresh and vibrant, we have to use the qualities the sign of the planet makes available for us, and we have to use them in connection with the areas shown by the house placement of the planet. So with planets and signs and houses, we have our framework for playing out our life story. But there also have to be conflicts and alliances and challenges, and gifts and surprises and magic. And this comes through the aspects. The aspects are specific energetic connections between the planets (players), and they either force us to act to solve certain challenges or give us some great opportunities for going where we want to go. To use another metaphor, we could see our astrological horoscope as an orchestra, in which our soul is the conductor—or like the colors available on our palette, with the soul as the painter. In some ways, our horoscope is a given factor, and in that respect it could be said to give us a fated life. There are no possibilities for exchanging our horoscope for a better one after we have arrived at birth. But the freedom in life comes from how we use the available colors to paint our picture or how well we play with the instruments of our personality. An example of the differences that can occur through the use of free will is the fact that Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin had almost identical horoscopes. One became a dictator and started a world war; the other made a hilarious film about a dictator that started a world war. And just briefly, why does the horoscope work? As we know, the Sun and Moon have a great influence on all life on Earth, as well as its water.
introduction
Some say that the outer planets have too little effect to be counted. Well, since most of us rarely know what we have until we lose it, we could use the same technique with a planet. Let us take Saturn as an example. If it has no influence, we could move it from the solar system without causing any trouble for humans and life on Earth. But let us hope nobody really tries this, because the whole solar system would go into terrible chaos and life on Earth would probably disappear if we removed Saturn from its orbit. And one more thing: why is the moment of birth so important? Until we are born, we are in symbiosis with the mother organism. It is the moment the umbilical cord is cut that we become an independent organism, and it is when we take our first breath that we connect with the energetic condition in the world as a unique being.
A Short Explanation of Astrological Language As mentioned, we have twelve signs. These twelve signs are divided into four elements and three qualities, as follows: •
Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius are fire signs.
•
Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn are earth signs.
•
Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius are air signs.
•
Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces are water signs.
•
Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn are cardinal signs.
•
Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius are fixed signs.
•
Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces are mutable signs.
We also say that we have cardinal, fixed and mutable houses. Planets in signs need to express themselves and behave in accordance with the qualities of that sign. The same goes for planets in the houses. •
he cardinal houses are the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth. PlanT ets in these houses have a great need to express themselves in the world and to create something through their will and through cooperation with others.
introduction
•
he fixed houses are the second, fifth, eighth, and eleventh. PlanT ets in these houses have a great need to use their full potential and to create things through staying power and their own force. They also have a need to create some kind of manifestation of their energy into form.
•
he mutable houses are the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth. Planets T in these houses have a need to seek and understand the matrix that is behind the world. They can be organizers or communicators. They seek to understand how things work and are always looking for meaning and structure.
There are ten major planets and players in our solar system. Each of these planets, as mentioned, expresses itself through a house and sign. When we say that Mercury is in Earth, for instance, it means that the mental and logical energy displayed through Mercury will need to express itself in an earthy and sensible manner. If it is in the eleventh house, we know that this logical and practical mental energy needs to be directed toward the future. The person with this placement needs to have ideals, plans, and aspirations to fulfill his or her needs in order to live a full and satisfying life. In this book you will be shown step by step how these combinations work. You will get a thorough understanding of how each element, quality, and sign functions, as well as a full explanation of what the planet residing in a house and sign needs to do to fulfill itself. In this way, this book will not be just another book about astrology. It will be a map to your true self, a map that can show you the road to fulfill your life’s purpose and teach you how to live as full and fulfilling a life as possible. It will also be a map for reaching that stage of consciousness that many call “awakened” or “enlightened.” For those who seek to fulfill their ego, astrology is a great tool to achieve that. For those who seek to leave their ego behind and live a life in oneness with existence and the moment, this spiritual astrology is an even better tool.
astrology and enlightenment Many masters describe enlightenment as a state that is absolutely natural. It is also described as bliss, ecstasy, devotion, and total peace of the soul. Sounds good to me—even better than a cup of hot chocolate. Most of us would like to buy some of this enlightenment stuff, if we just knew where to buy it. The strange thing is that the road to enlightenment seems to be for sale in so many places these days, and still I have met so few who have really walked that road. You know, it isn’t enough to buy the map or let someone guide you a few steps down the road. You have to go all the way to the end of the line—and walk a lot of it by yourself too. Some say that enlightenment is the end of the game: we come home, dissolve into All That Is, and become lost in the sea of bliss and oneness. This is neither my belief nor my experience. While there may be an end station like this, I think it is far, far away in eternity. We humans live in a three-dimensional world, and if you think there exists maybe a 112-dimensional world with 112-dimensional beings … whoa. That is a long way away from our little playing ground. In my experience, what we call enlightenment is just the arrival of one being in the
astrology and enlightenment
next dimension of reality, which is the dimension of eternal now and is outside the perimeters of time and space. So we need a map to this dimension. Of course, we have our intuition and inner knowing. We have the spiritual instincts of a salmon. The salmon was a holy animal in so many old societies. I believe this was because the salmon instinctively knew how to find the way home to its birthplace. It struggled up rivers and climbed great obstacles, only to return to the place it came from. This same longing and knowing exists in humans—not for our physical birthplace, but to find our spiritual place of birth and to reunite with All That Is. But humans are not salmons. We have developed this strange thing that is called mind, consciousness, cleverness, awareness, and thought. In my opinion, the human mind is not an accident. We do not reach the state of natural oneness and innocence by devolving into children and savages. We move toward such a state through evolving and becoming so intelligent that we are no longer fooled by the tricky shadow plays of emotions, mind, and brain. In my opinion, to stay innocent and childlike takes a mastermind—one that is able to remain clear and focused, cut through all the bullshit, avoid all the traps, and stay in the field of naïve innocence and bliss by choice. For most of us, this is the main road on which to learn and become enlightened, to make choices—to learn to make the true choices. And since we exist in time and space, we need a map that can show us the road from time and space to the eternal now, a map that can help us to see deeper into who we are, a map that can show us the equipment we have to work with on this journey through time and space, and a map that can show us how the timespace dimension really functions. It is obvious that as long as we do not understand time and space, we will be trapped there. And ladies and gentlemen, we are so happy that there exists such a map—a map that contains all of those things and even more—and that, my dear fellow travelers on this road to enlightenment, is the astrological horoscope. It conveys the brilliant intelligence of the stars (astro-logic) to human beings. Psychological astrology has proved through the decades that astrology is an excellent tool for seeing deeper into the human psyche. With
astrology and enlightenment
the personal horoscope, you can go directly into the underlying blueprint of the psyche and understand what is driving a person, how complexes and fears are formed, and how to remove those complexes. But although elements and insights from psychological astrology will play a part in this book, this is not its topic. A horoscope shows the tools an incarnated being has to work with. It is not necessarily a set of psychological complexes. Rather, it is your heavenly choir: the voices you have to use to tune in to the cosmic song of oneness. Or it is your palette: the colors you have to paint your life, the colors you use to create and become that rainbow that will be the bridge between time and space and eternity. And then, astrology is the science of time and space—not symbolically or as a metaphor, but quite literally astrology is the science of time and space. And then of course, it is also the science that can show us the road to what is behind time and space. To make this simple: what creates time and space? Or even clearer: what creates our notion and experience of time and space? To this there is only one answer: the movement of the celestial bodies, like planets and suns and galaxies! Day and night are created by Earth rotating around its axis, and the house system in astrology is a direct reflection of this rotation. The year is created by Earth rotating around the Sun, and the signs of the zodiac are a direct reflection of this movement. And the Moon’s dancing around Earth creates our rhythm in time and space. It creates our inner and outer tidal waters and waves. It creates the rhythm of sinking in and going out—a rhythm we easily forget when we live in electrified cities and almost never see and feel the difference of the tiny, silvery sliver of the new Moon compared with the round and shining belly of the full Moon.
the times they are a-changing Well, the truth is that it is not just the times that change. Time itself is changing. As we have seen, we have our own notion of time, even if time itself may be an illusion created by the movement of celestial bodies. And it is this notion in the human consciousness about what time is and how it functions that really is changing. In fact, we are moving from limited, linear time and space to time as the growth of an eternal now, where all dimensions of time and space exist simultaneously beside each other. In the beginning of humankind’s existence on this planet, humans experienced time as an eternal return. In a way, they lived in eternity, where the same Sun rose and set every day. The religious rituals of these humans often consisted of helping the gods to keep this eternal rhythm flowing. And in the absolute beginning for Gaia, life on this planet changed exceptionally slowly compared to what happens today. The same amoeba came and went for millions and millions of years, until it slowly changed and started to become more complex. Every time life on Earth reached a certain level of complexity, a new evolutionary step kicked in. The biggest leaps may have been life moving from sea to land, the farewell to dinosaurs and the hegemony of warm-blooded mammals, and 11
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the times they are a-changing
the emergence of humans. The change that took place when dinosaurs became extinct could be seen as a change in which life on Earth started to develop feelings instead of instinct as a ruling guide of behavior. The next great step came when things became so complex and evolution had speeded up to such a degree that intellect and self-consciousness started to develop: in other words, the entrance of humans on the stage of Mother Earth. Today the complexity of life on Earth and the speed of time seem to have reached a new point of crisis, where evolution needs to take a huge step forward to master the new conditions. It may sound strange to you that our notion of time, as well as time itself, is changing. But look at it this way: As Einstein proved, we live in a world of relativity, and the parameter that defines this world is time and space. We can say that time and space are dependent on each other. If time is changing, our understanding of space has to change too. And if space changes, our notion of time has to be changed. Einstein proved that if we could move through space faster than light, time would start to change, and we would eventually start to move backward through time—in theory. But clearly, the speed with which we move through space is important for creating our experience of time. And today we move through space faster than at any time before. With our bodies, we can move around Earth in only a matter of hours. And through the Internet, we can be at many places around the world at the same time. We can have a conference with people from all around the world, and all our consciousnesses will be in the same “virtual� reality. So, time is speeding up and space is shrinking down. We can look at this from another angle. If nothing happens and nothing changes in your life in a certain span of time, you feel that life is an eternal repetition and moves slowly. Our experience of time, then, is also connected to how much stuff is crammed into a certain amount of outer time (such as a day). And you know, in one day I get more input of ideas and information about the world and have to relate to more people and opinions than I might during a whole life in the Middle Ages. So time is really speeding up. For many of us, it speeds up to a velocity that makes it hard for us to keep track. Time goes too fast. So much happens and so much has to be decided with so little time to do it that we become frustrated, lost,
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and stressed and end up totally exhausted and unable to make those choices and cope with our lives. We get stressed because our old tools —instincts, emotions, and mind—do not know how to deal with all of this. We feel unable to find a way out of the conflicts and turmoil. There seems to be no way back to the old, but also no way ahead to the new. So we get stressed and frustrated and feel stuck in an unsolvable situation. The only solution is to really understand that the fundament of time-space on which we have based our reality is changing. We have to develop a completely new set of skills and a new tool to deal with a new time-space frame and reality. This tool is called intuition. It is called awareness. It is called the ability to live in the now, the ability to be totally true to who you are now, not who you were yesterday, and totally open for what the world is now, not stuck in a world that is a day or a week or a century old. Only through being here, in the now, can we learn to thrive and flourish in this new time-space dimension that is opening up for humanity. And of course, the perfect map and tool to find your way through this maze of time and space is the astrological horoscope. It is the perfect description of how your being is manifested into time and space and the perfect map for this being to find the magic doors into the eternal now. For a long time, humanity has adored and fought with and respected God as if he or she were our father or mother. We could say that time and space has been the playpen where humanity has been able to learn and grow through its childhood. Now something is really changing. Humanity is no longer satisfied with having been created. We have started to create ourselves. We change nature and the conditions for life on Earth. We influence the weather and almost pollute ourselves to extinction. We even start to plunder with genetic technology and the cloning of living beings and in some ways create new life. We are not satisfied with being created and put in the playpen of time and space. We want to be creators. And as creators, we are not just children of one or many gods. We are starting to become like gods ourselves. We desire to be equal to the Creator, because we are creators, just as children start to become equals to their parents. But then first there has to be puberty,
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the times they are a-changing
and I have a suspicion that this is where mankind is at the moment: in our difficult, rebellious, and self-contesting stage of puberty. And this is a difficult time. Again, the best map to lead us through this difficult time is the horoscope, which can describe exactly what will happen when we let our immature emotions and egoistic old ways govern our lives, and what will happen when we go with our godlike nature and follow the true essence of who we are in our souls. And this book is about going with our souls. It is not about our faults and shortcomings, but about using the horoscope as a guide to the open, true, and therefore perfect expression of who we are. And where are we headed? Well, in the first instant we are not headed out of the playpen of time and space, but rather we have to take responsibility for it ourselves. God has fixed the playing grounds for such a long time, now we have to do it by ourselves. We have to see that we are not just created in time and space. We have to realize that we are creators of time and space, as well as all that happens within the frames of this playpen. And as we learn and understand and take responsibility for our own personal time and space, as well as our collective time and space, we start to move outside the playpen. Then we can be trusted with participating in a bigger universe—a universe that consists of an endless number of time-space realities stacked on top of each other, in the same way that different directions lie beside each other. In physical time and space, we have 360 degrees of possible choices of directions. In the next stage of our development, we enter a reality that has a similar 360-degree total view of choices for time-space realities. And once again, the horoscope is a guiding map through these challenges and gifts. It is what the soul has chosen to be and experience through in this incarnation into time-space. It is the tools and energies we need to flow with and create with if we want to become fully aligned with that reality that is natural for the soul: the reality of multidimensional reality. One of the things that may need some clarification in this respect is the relationship between fate and free will. Is astrology about fate, and is the horoscope a definition of who you are that you cannot escape? Or
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is astrology about your freedom to use your will to be and become whatever you are capable of ? In the space of eternal now, there is absolutely no difference between fate and free will. There is no conflict and no dispute. They are the same. You have totally free will to follow your current fate or to create another fate. And that which you do with your free will creates your fate. At the same time, you are what you are, and no matter what you do, in your core you will go on to be what you are. In the end, your unavoidable fate is to realize fully what you are, but at the same time, you have complete freedom in when and how you realize this. And the closer you come to the moment of eternal now, the more your only longing becomes to be what you are and to fulfill the fate of what you are meant to be and do.